ANC25LA071 · Piper PA-18-150
Blue River Aviation Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From AAQ · Palmer, AK to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA071
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3994Z
- Operator
- Blue River Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From AAQ · Palmer, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1963)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control on ground
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor, seated in the rear seat, stated that he and the pilot receiving instruction, seated in the front seat, were practicing landings in a tailwheel-equipped airplane. The purpose of the flight was for the pilot that was receiving instruction to obtain a tailwheel endorsement. During the landing rollout, gusting wind conditions lifted the left wing and the pilot receiving instruction applied right rudder, but the airplane continued to the right. The flight instructor then applied more right rudder; however, the airplane ground looped and sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The instructor pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing on runway 13 with wind from 080° at 9 knots, gusting to 16 knots.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s delayed remedial action/lack of supervision. Contributing to the accident was the pilot receiving instructions failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA071
- Event ID
- 20250710200508
- Case number
- ANC25LA071
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 34cf6c64ea6ade37b13b6e61e55682d06e473206914404e1aca867940d5a586e; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:04:23.865Z.